Anno Online from Ubisoft is a free to play empire builder spin-off from the popular single player Anno franchise where players start out with an individual settlement and must build it up, populate it, manage resources and expand. The game, at its heart, is really aimed at the more casual RTS fan as a browser based title it is more simplistic than other games, whilst overall there is some enjoyment to be had with the game there’s quite a few token issues with the game that constantly put it in the firing line.

• Too Streamlined - The game is far too minimalist in comparison to its predecessors. We loved the previous single player Anno games and whilst we often prefer military focused strategy games (such as Civilization) Anno was always a good bridge between that and pure city builders like SimCity. Packed with features and content the original Anno games felt like they had so much more depth than Anno Online does, whilst it may be a browser game that doesn’t mean it needs to lack the same robust mechanics that the previous titles had, particularly with their being micro-transactions in the game it honestly at times feels like you are potentially paying more and receiving less. Making a game simpler makes it feel more like a Facebook Farmville type game for the masses and not a sequel to the franchise many players have loved for years. We’d change the developer mentality and either put more effort into the game features or more faith in the players that they can actually handle something a little more complex.


• Payment Walls - The game is most definitely a freemium title. Whilst starting out the game is all smiley and happy and seemingly a great free to play game, it’s only as you play longer that you start to hit walls typically in the form of construction times that require Rubies premium currency to get passed. The further into the game you are the more committed and invested you are in your settlement, so it feels like a “Okay now we have you, let’s try and get some money from you” with the ludicrous construction times. Essentially the game gets to a point where you can log in and do everything you need to do/can do without having to pay cash in about five or ten minutes and then have no reason to carry on playing. If you do want to keep playing then you’re going to need to spend some Rubies, which effectively makes the game a pay to play title. We’d like to see shorter build times and alternate routes to speeding up construction and other time dependent activities instead of constantly hitting a wall that just takes the fun out of the game.


• Islands - Expansion is just too expensive. In a similar vein to the above, which is more about the constant waiting around to play and having to pay to keep playing, Islands provide a different payment wall. Players will reach a point in the game where they have to expand from their single island in search of the Hemp resource that their main islanders are crying out for to make linen shirts, and the focus of the game is keeping the people happy. Acquiring new Islands costs Rubies, thankfully your first Island isn’t too expensive, unfortunately it won’t provide you anywhere near enough hemp or shirts to fully satisfy your populous but will help you progress enough… and then the people want more resources and so you need more Islands…. and now they cost around 20k in Rubies, or around $60. Actually getting 20k Rubies just through playing is going to take you a RIDICULOUSLY long time (gone are the glory days of the tutorial where they were throwing them at you), and players can ultimately own 12 Huge sized islands… that’s around $700 just to play the game to its maximum capacity or absolutely hardcoring it to earn 240,000 Rubies (honestly we don’t even know where you would start to earn that amount of premium currency). What to change? Not being so money grabby with the cost of Islands, stop making your game less enjoyable so you can bring in some cash cows.


• Technically Inferior - Browser based troubles. The game runs on Flash, must be played through uPlay and can be access through Steam, these things combined are a recipe for issues (we have little love for uPlay in general with our single player games) and you don’t have to look too far to see reviews, reports and feedback complaining about plug-in errors, not being able to load the game, slow server response, crashes and generally just technically buggy.


• Minimal Combat - The naval combat is pretty uninspired. Whilst we’re not expect Sid Meier’s Civilization level of combat the fact is that combat being present puts it on our radar of weak features: would probably have been better to just not have it as we’d sooner be without a feature than have a bad one. Combat is simply naval battles with a rock-paper-scissors three way between Galley-Caravel-Brig where each has one ship it can beat and another it will be beaten by; and that’s pretty much it. There’s some elements of choosing your ammo and consumables to boost, but the cost in resources behind it is rarely worth the minimal payout, though you can of course spend cash! We don’t expect a land, air and sea style combat system, but with naval warfare in there we do feel like it could have been a much more involved system; but like the rest of the game it is lacking in depth.

These are some of the things that we would change about Anno Online, but what do you think? What would you change about this game? Would you add anything else to the list? We await your opinions! Let us know!!!!!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2015 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.